1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sheet feeding apparatus which separates and feeds a sheet one by one from a sheet bundle stacked on a sheet loading table, and an image forming system equipped with the aforesaid sheet feeding apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, there has been known an air sheet feeding apparatus which supplies a sheet one by one to an image forming section of an image forming apparatus such as a copier and a printer.
The air sheet feeding apparatus is equipped with an air suction section at the inside of an endless belt, adsorbs a sheet one by one with a perforated belt and the like in which air suction inlets are formed, and conveys the sheet by rotating the belt.
As an adsorption conveyance section of such an air sheet feeding apparatus, there has been known an apparatus in which a conveyance surface which adsorbs a sheet is composed of a plane and an inclined plane (for example, JP-A No. H6-199438). Further, there has been known an apparatus in which projections are protruded between belts to bend a sheet to be adsorbed, and separation air is allowed to be blown (for example, JP-A No. 62-16944).
However, there are many variety kinds of sheets of paper, and there exist a flexible and poor fragile sheet of paper, and a sheet of paper in which sheet forming pulp is cellular and thereby even the second sheet is absorbed through the absorbed top sheet and conveyed. In case of such sheets of paper, even by the sheet feeding apparatus described in the above Patent Documents 1 and 2, the gap between sheets to blow separation air can not be formed, resulting in a double sheet feeding problem.